SourceMod is an extremely popular 3rd party mod that thousands of active Source Engine servers use.

By updating VALVe's Source Engine gameservers constantly without any coordination or communication with the SM developers, you are really hurting lots of communities founded around Source Engine games.

What VALVe keeps doing is reckless and extremely disingenuous to the users who made your company what it is today.

Considering the fact that CS did itself originate from a "mod" of HL, I would imagine that your company would have a certain amount of respect for all the hard work that modders like the SourceMod dev team pot into extending the features and functionality of your otherwise bland core game.

Instead VALVe keep breaking compatibility with popular and established mods with blatant disregard for the amount of damage it will do to communities that use and rely on those mods to provide fun and interactive experiences for its members and guests.

In summary, please first consider rolling back yesterday's CSS update, which causes servers running SM to continuously and repeatedly crash. Second, consider coordinating with the SM dev team to provide them the technical information they will need to prepare for updates (before the updates occur).

What VALVe keeps doing is reckless and extremely disingenuous to the users who made your company what it is today.

Considering the fact that CS did itself originate from a "mod" of HL, I would imagine that your company would have a certain amount of respect for all the hard work that modders like the SourceMod dev team pot into extending the features and functionality of your otherwise bland core game.

Instead VALVe keep breaking compatibility with popular and established mods with blatant disregard for the amount of damage it will do to communities that use and rely on those mods to provide fun and interactive experiences for its members and guests.

Major updates will break SourceMod. There's no possible way Valve can maintain compatibility with third-party mods.

Matter of fact, the only way that Valve could ship updates and not break third-party mods is to make absolutely no major changes to the game.

That means no chat colors, no new gamemodes, no Pyroland, no nothing.

Besides, most of the time the SM dev team responds amazingly quickly and a stable build is available the next day. Just disable SourceMod temporarily when this happens (which is not very often at all).

Matter of fact, the only way that Valve could ship updates and not break third-party mods is to make absolutely no major changes to the game.

There have been a lot of updates the last years, that broke plugins and maps for HL2-Deathmatch, or even HL2-deathmatch itself, but there has not been any important change to the game. No bugs have been fixed, nothing has been improved. The only thing I see is that they like to "update" these old games shortly before weekends , so that exactly when the servers are well-frequented, everything is broken and a lot of players are disappointed.

And don't forget that modders, mappers and server admins are doing their "support" in spare time and that they do also spend a lot of money, to give players the best possible gaming fun.
By this, they are supporting the game and Valve itself. Valve would not have so many customers without all these modders and admins! Valve should be grateful for the job that these people do. But instead of this they do never ask anyone if he wants an update and even do never announce any of these useless updates. It is arrogant to ignore the work of these people by destroying it again and again.

There have been a lot of updates the last years, that broke plugins and maps for HL2-Deathmatch, or even HL2-deathmatch itself, but there has not been any important change to the game. No bugs have been fixed, nothing has been improved. The only thing I see is that they like to "update" these old games shortly before weekends , so that exactly when the servers are well-frequented, everything is broken and a lot of players are disappointed.

And don't forget that modders, mappers and server admins are doing their "support" in spare time and that they do also spend a lot of money, to give players the best possible gaming fun.
By this, they are supporting the game and Valve itself. Valve would not have so many customers without all these modders and admins! Valve should be grateful for the job that these people do. But instead of this they do never ask anyone if he wants an update and even do never announce any of these useless updates. It is arrogant to ignore the work of these people by destroying it again and again.

Valve does appreciate modders. It's simply impossible to please everyone. No updates? People complain. Updates that occasionally break third-party plugins? Less people complain.

Yes, modders do spend money. However, people do appreciate them. Right after the Pyromania update hit, the donations at AlliedModders maxed out.

I run servers. I develop SourceMod plugins. Basically, it's impossible for Valve to avoid breaking mods from time to time without abandoning the games entirely.

Something else I want to say: when this thread was posted, the fix was already available. The CS:S update in the OP brought the game up-to-date with the changes in TF2 shortly prior. As a result of the TF2 update, SourceMod snapshots were made available that were compatible with the new game. CS:S hadn't gotten those changes yet, so the new versions of SourceMod didn't work with it yet. You just need to look around, chances are what's broken has already been fixed.

I run servers. I develop SourceMod plugins. Basically, it's impossible for Valve to avoid breaking mods from time to time without abandoning the games entirely.

I do also run servers, and while you are defending Valves stupid updating-politics, they have released another update which broke my hrcbots. Server was in a crashing loop this morning, until I deactivated the plugin. Do not know what else is broken, I just do not have the time to check my servers everytime when Valve is kidding us.
Please tell me, why they just cannot stop updating such an old game like HL2-Deathmatch, when there comes absolutely NO improvement with any of their updates? They are just updating the game engine at all, which may have some positive effect for newer games, but as an old HL2-Deathmatch player and server admin I must say that there was NOT ONE improvement in ANY of all the previous updates for THIS game. So I do absolutely see no reason, why they just cannot stop updating the engine for THIS game!

So..., it is again WEEKEND, and again they broke my server!
Thanks very much, Valve.

Actually abcorn, Valve could easily support SM developers by simply releasing updated gamedata files for the compiled extensions that hook into Valve functions.

It's very simple for them since they are the ones compiling the engine. They could EASILY provide a list of address offsets.

What SM has to do currently is scan the compiled binary for name-mangled function signatures. This takes time and is not always easy to find all offsets. Furthermore, if Valve add/removes/changes any existing functions, it could break compatibility and they don't document the changes nor inform anyone of the changes.

It doesn't matter that a fix came out for this particular update. This thread was in response to a continuous and repeating problem that I wish would stop in the future. Valve has a attitude of indifference to the consequences of their actions.